ANTIOCH — Following threats of a lawsuit over disparities in the way students with disabilities and students of color are disciplined, the Antioch Unified School District has agreed to allow a third-party review its disciplinary practices and special education program.

The review is intended to study possible “implicit bias” in the district, meaning that designated experts will try to determine what unconscious prejudices might come into play when students are disciplined. At the end of the review period, which starts this spring, the district will be presented with a list of recommendations on how to alter its practices.

Advocates for students of color and students with disabilities originally approached the district to threaten legal action over the disproportionalities. But they abandoned that avenue when the district agreed to sit down with them and come up with a plan.

District officials deny that the Antioch Unified has a problem with disparities in student discipline. But officials say they decided that defending against a lawsuit could potentially cost the district millions and decided to agree to the review as a “defensive approach,” district Superintendent Don Gill said.

“We determined that an adversarial relationship is not in the best interest of our students,” Gill said at Wednesday’s school board meeting. “Collaborating, communicating, solving problems and sharing goals will allow us to move forward positively to enhance our commitment to help all our students to achieve their potential.”

District data show that black students are disciplined at a much higher rate than any other racial demographic — more than 2,200 black students were suspended in the 2013-14 school year, compared with 430 white students. In the district, black students make up 26 percent of the overall student population, with white students comprising 22 percent and students of Hispanic descent comprising 37 percent.

Officials with the East County NAACP, as well as advocates for youth and people with disabilities are calling the settlement “groundbreaking,” praising Antioch Unified for being the first district to agree to such a review and saying they hope it can serve as a model for other school districts.

“We chose Antioch due to the volume of calls we were getting from parents involving predominately special ed students and students of color,” Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund fellow Robert Borrelle said. “A lot of individual cases were very similar.”

But advocates who fought the district — and were willing to sue over what they saw as a discipline problem — are also quick to say that this isn’t a black-vs.-white issue, and they’re not accusing district teachers of racism.

“Teachers go into this line of work because they love kids and they’re not racist,” National Center for Youth Law senior lawyer Michael Harris said. “So this isn’t about that at all. But we also know from looking at research that people who mean to do well sometimes act on their subconscious biases. Everyone has implicit bias.”